As one of Bermuda's top landscape artists, Sheilagh Head needs no introduction to local viewers. For decades her paintings have been much admired mainly in group exhibitions, and also enthusiastically included in private and corporate collections both here and abroad.

It has, however, been six years since Mrs. Head held a solo exhibition, but that will change on Friday, when `Island Light' opens to the public at the Windjammer Gallery.

The title reflects the artist's love of islands, Bermuda, Anglesey in Wales and Monhegan Island among them. A particular favourite is Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine where, for the past three years, she has joined fellow artists in stepping back from modern civilisation to a tiny world without cars, television or electricity, which is reached only by a ten-mile boat ride from the mainland, and where Homer and Hopper once stayed.

"It is a magical place that just gets to you because it is so amazing," she said. "Originally, I went to paint with Don Stone, a very famous American artist, and have been going back for three summers now."

In the 30-painting collection that comprises `Island Light, viewers will be able to savour for themselves some of the Monhegan magic, as well as landscapes of the other Maine islands, and of course the artist's beloved Bermuda. What they will not find, however, are human figures in Mrs. Head's paintings, for she rarely includes them. "I love light and reflections and movement in my paintings, but in rarely putting people into them I am trying to concentrate on the land rather than the awful mess we are making of it," she said. As always, the artist's approach to her canvas is a build-up colour and a slow realisation of the painting.

"I don't work with great sweeping swabs of colour - I sometimes wish I did. I like to allow the subject to speak to me, so everything is at first very unresolved and formless until the act of painting takes over," Mrs. Head added. "It is hard to know where a painting is going to end up, but exploring the process is a great deal of fun mixed an enormous amount of sheer frustration."

When it comes to capturing Bermuda's beauty, the artist eschews the "chocolate box" approach, preferring instead to explore its subtleties.

Mrs. Head, who was described by the late The Royal Gazette arts critic Patricia Calnan as "less interested in the figurative reality before her than in the spirit and rhythm of the overall scene", said "my paintings are still about the land, sea and sky around us, but more and more they are an abstract expression of the beauty that surrounds us. You have to know a place well in order to paint it. When you really start to look there are so many subtle nuances here. Sam Morse Brown used to see pink and silver; I love the purples and lavenders. I also love warm shadows, and the light that permeates the shadows - something the camera doesn't see."

She will, however, exclude detail the camera might see if it does not enhance a landscape.

"I make no apologies for attempting to paint the beauty of our Island," she said. "So if I leave out the odd telephone pole or omit the latest condo development, it can be put down to artistic licence!"

As an artist who continues to grow, Mrs. Head says she is enjoying her maturity as a painter, and the ability to see more clearly where she is going. As for the future, she simply wants "to be able to paint without any concern for what is considered to be trendy or fashionable, and not to be swayed by those who try to dictate how artists should paint by making statements such as, `If it's not cutting edge it has no validity' and `artists should challenge themselves'."

"I have now come to painting on my own terms, and where I go from here will be in response to my own experience as an artist," she said.

Mrs. Head studied painting and sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arts in Perugia, Italy before completing her education at the Manchester College of Art, UK, where celebrated artist David Hockney's closest friend was her tutor.

"We were all rebels and anti-establishment," she said. "However, I wanted to paint the landscape, and at that time that was considered to be anti-establishment, but then I realised that there was no difference between abstraction and figurative painting - they are one and the same." Her work has been selected for two exhibitions at the London's Mall Galleries, and she is an elected member of the Copley Society of Boston, the oldest art society in the US.

`Island Light' will be at the Windjammer Gallery from this Friday until the first week in December. For further information ( 292-7861 or e-mail wgalleryibl.bm